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Show (Continued from page 4) was just the right fit in a stick ofj type in the days when newspaper body type was also set by hand. The editor of a Midwestern weekly, disputes all of these stories. His claim is that -30-began with a columnist, who saw to it that each of his columns contained thirty items. And when this was done, he simply ended it with -30-which gave notice to the composing room that this was the end of the piece. If all the -30- marks used by the nation's newsmen were laid end to end they'd probably circle the earth. But where did the thing really begin -30- 30- In the patois of the press -30- is the end. But where the tight little symbol came from is not only clouded in mystery; its or;gin is downright controversial Half the newsmen in America tag their stories with -30-. But you could put the names of those who know its origin in a hat. And from each there'd be a different explanation and an argument to back it. No newspaper term is perhaps per-haps as well known to the public as -30-. Aling press row, soma of the more popular versions of the birth of -30- go like this: In a wire service office in Los Angeles a Western Union telegrapher recalls hearing that the -30- symbol started with a Western Union operator, back in the bicycle days of Morse code. The old WU operator's! name was "THURTY" (cq). As he clicked off his daily file of stories, Thurty would sign each one: Thurty. The sign off became be-came a byword along the Morse line. Other telegraphers telegraph-ers picked it up and made it "Thirty". Then, at last, -30-. Then there's the yarn told in the composing room of a Chicago daily by a grizzled printer with hands like mercury. mer-cury. He remembers hearing that -30- originated during the pre-typewriter era of journalism. journal-ism. In those days, all news copy was WTitten in longhand by reporters. To indicate clearly the end of their stories, they adopted a numerical symbol. Which, as legend has it, was -30- But why was the symbol -30-, and not 40 or 50? A headline writer on the rim of a Phidelphia paper has one answer. He claims that -30- stemmed from the fact that 30 words (Continued on page 5) |
